The weight of the world pressed down on me as I walked out of the hospital that night. Another 12-hour shift in the mental health unit, another wave of heartache as I carried the stories of each person out of the door with me.
I thought of the father who’d tried to take his life after losing his job. Then, almost unbidden, my mind turned to the young woman with scars tracing her arms, her hopelessness still gripping me, before my mind recalled the tears and pained expression of the mother in the throes of postpartum darkness.
“Maybe I’m just too sensitive, or showing too much compassion,” I told myself, trying to find some solace in the emotional exhaustion that gripped me. “Maybe this is what people mean by ‘compassion fatigue,’” I thought.
My colleagues seemed to be handling it well, despite some appearing hardened and cynical about what they saw– likely their own form of self-protection. But what I felt didn’t seem like the warmth and tenderness I associated with genuine compassion; it was something closer to despair. A dark, heavy feeling that whispered, “What’s the point? There’s too much suffering. It’s all pointless and I’m powerless to change it”.
Looking back, I can see how being lost in that bleak empathy cost me my ability to help at all. It spiralled into my own depression, where I felt overwhelmed by every problem I witnessed, and unable to function or help.
It’s a familiar feeling for many of us, and it’s not only about the suffering we witness firsthand. We live in a time when stories of tragedy, political strife, war, and hardship are more accessible and prominent than ever — constantly at our fingertips. So why does compassion hurt so much? Isn’t it easier to turn away?
There’s actually a common misconception here. We often equate empathy — the ability to feel another’s pain as our own — with compassion. And while empathy is a crucial ingredient, it’s not the whole recipe. In fact, unchecked empathy can be a dangerous thing. It can drown us in the very suffering we wish to alleviate, leaving us paralysed and unable to act. We see so much, feel so much, and the sheer volume of pain becomes overwhelming. That’s when empathy, meant to be a bridge, gives way to a dark, bottomless pit of despair.
True compassion, on the other hand, is empathy with direction. It acknowledges the pain, but then asks, “What can I do to help?” Empathy is the ache in your chest when you see someone crying; compassion is the hand reaching out to offer comfort. Compassion takes that pain of empathy, transcends it, and ignites a passionate fire. It’s a forward-moving energy that saves us from drowning in hopelessness.
“Empathy is the ache in your chest when you see someone crying; compassion is the hand reaching out to offer comfort.”
This distinction is beautifully illustrated in Buddhist teachings, which speak of loving-kindness and compassion as two sides of the same coin. Loving-kindness is the heartfelt wish for others to find genuine happiness. It’s expansive, like holding a vision of someone’s potential, their capacity for joy, even when they’re mired in suffering. Compassion, on the other hand, focuses on freeing others from pain. But here’s the key: it doesn’t wallow in that pain. It recognises it and then actively seeks a way, no matter how small, to ease it.
Think of the Good Samaritan. He saw the injured man on the side of the road, felt empathy, but didn’t stop there. He acted. He bandaged wounds, offered shelter, and ensured ongoing care. That’s compassion in action. Compare this to despair, which has given up entirely, or to pity, which often masquerades as compassion. Pity is a fleeting “How awful,” followed by a quick turn away, a way to avoid the discomfort of witnessing another’s pain. Compassion, in contrast, dares to stay present, without being consumed.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama once spoke of being rushed to hospital while ill on a visit to Bodh Gaya, and every bump of the unpaved road sent jolts of pain through him. Then, he began to notice the suffering of the families and communities outside his window. This shift, bringing others’ difficulties into his heart, ironically eased his own discomfort. He transformed “I’m in pain” into “Others are in pain too, may we be free.” Not to deny his own struggle, but to recognise that connecting with the shared human experience of pain can soften the hold our problems have on us.
The Buddha illustrated this in the famed story of the mustard seed — a story of a grieving mother named Kisa Gotami, who lost her only child and, in her desperation, begged the Buddha for help. He told her he could help, but that she would need to bring a mustard seed from a household that had never known death. She went from door to door, but every family had experienced loss. As she shared her own grief and heard of each family’s heartbreaks, she realised suffering is not hers alone — it’s part of being human. That shared recognition softened her sorrow and gave her a sense of comfort and respite. When we see that sorrow visits everyone, we stop feeling so singled out by our own pain and can open ourselves to caring for others in theirs.
One of my favourite stories is of a child walking along a beach covered in thousands of stranded starfish after a storm. An onlooker scoffs, “You’ll never save them all — why bother?” The child picks up the next starfish and before throwing it back into the sea, says, “It might not seem important, but it might be the most important thing ever for this starfish.” That’s the heart of compassion. We recognise that we can’t fix everything, but we can do something. We can make a difference, one starfish at a time. And those small acts, multiplied by countless individuals, create ripples of change that can become a powerful wave.
We can’t just ignore the suffering of the world — pretending it doesn’t exist is one extreme — nor do we want to be consumed and overwhelmed by it. So what can we do? A middle way says, ‘Yes, suffering is there, and I won’t turn away, but I also won’t collapse into despair. I’ll do what I can’ — even if that’s just a small act of kindness, or something that feels trivial. After all, it’s far better to channel our energy into some good, however small, than to do no good because we don’t see the point.
That single shift, from passive hopelessness to active caring, is often the difference between giving up and making a real difference. Even if just for one starfish at a time.
